Beyond the Buzz: Less is More Marketing with Jo Cowper | EP214

Ever felt like you're on a marketing treadmill, endlessly chasing the next social media high? Jo Cowper, brand strategist and Six Degrees East founder, joins us to challenge that exhausting cycle. As someone who swapped the Scottish hustle for the tranquil French Alps—without sacrificing business success—Jo embodies the less-is-more ethos, advocating for marketing with intent and balance. This episode is a breath of fresh alpine air for anyone seeking to redefine their relationship with work and success.

We're tackling the myth that social media is the marketing end-all. Together with Jo, we dissect alternative strategies that resonate more authentically with you and your clients. Whether you're inclined to blog your heart out, play the long game with SEO, or forge impactful partnerships, we're exploring the avenues that allow your business to thrive without demanding your constant online presence. It's about being strategic with where and how you show up, keeping burnout at bay while still achieving your business goals.

Rounding out our conversation, we're not just talking theory—we're equipping you with actionable tools. Jo's Marketing Action Planning Webinar is your guide through a quarter of strategic growth, with resources designed to align your goals with your well-being. If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the marketing maze, this chat with Jo is your compass to a balanced and fulfilling path forward. So tune in, and let's set the course for a marketing journey that celebrates your values, your life, and your business. 

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Transcript

Donna Eade: 0:51

You're listening to the Mindset and Action podcast, the place to be to grow and streamline your business. I'm your host, donna Eade. Let's jump into the show ["Sweetest Love Song"]. Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort. Paul J Mayer, welcome back to the podcast everyone. Oh, I'm always so excited to introduce you to somebody new, and today I have Joe with me. Joe, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, really excited to be here. I think you're actually my second Joe on the podcast, so you better let people know exactly who you are and what it is that you do so we can differentiate you.

Jo Cowper: 1:41

Good plan. Ok, so I'm Joe Calper and I'm a brand strategy coach. I have a business called Six Degrees East, which is named after the place where I live, which is the French Alps, which happens to be at six degrees east in the mountains, and I support business owners to build a marketing plan that they actually well enjoy to stick to.

Donna Eade: 2:01

Fabulous. Now, if anybody's listening, which I know there will be, they'll be going. Hang on a minute. French Alps. That was not a French Alps accent. How did you end up in the French Alps and where did you hail from originally? Like we need to guess.

Jo Cowper: 2:17

I'll give you the pot and story here. Actually being in the French Alps is effectively, that's me kind of walking the walk, if you like, because what I believe is that, as a business owner, the point, one of the biggest things you want to get out of your business is the opportunity to live life the way you want it, on your terms, in your way, in your place, and for me that was the French Alps. Unfortunately, my partner agreed, otherwise that could have been problematic, could have been so five years ago, after I had my business up and running for a couple of years and we realized that we had the opportunity to actually work from anywhere, and so we sold the house and took the kids out of school and moved to the French Alps and have been here ever since. Lovely, I moved here from Scotland and not actually Scottish, but there's been a bit of dotting about in between. So let's say I moved from Scotland to the Alps. We'll go with that.

Donna Eade: 3:06

Lovely lovely, I love it and that is totally walking the walk and I think a lot of us dream about that kind of. I think a lot of social media kind of shows this nomad way of life. You can work from anywhere and I don't necessarily fall into that category of wanting that. I feel like if I'm on holiday, I want to be on holiday and I want to be present and enjoying it, not working on my laptop, where it seems like nomads just never go on holiday, they're just in different places working and that doesn't sound like fun to me. So I much prefer the idea of going somewhere that I want to live and working from there and then still going on holiday.

Jo Cowper: 3:48

Yes, although we're a bit stuck now on where to go on holiday, because this was where we always used to want to go on holiday. I think that's where we're here already.

Donna Eade: 3:56

I love that, just go. Oh, it's great if you can, as long as you can actually step away from work, and I think that's a boundary that sometimes people can't do when they're at home, like for me, even working from home, the housework still calls my name while I'm in the office. I'm just like, oh well, I'll just put this load of washing on in between calls or whatever, and it's like you're not supposed to be doing that, you're supposed to be working. Or if we take time off work, my other half works for a college, so if he's got his holiday but we're not actually going anywhere, the amount of times I'll end up here in here doing work and it's just like, no, I'm supposed to be on holiday with him. Just stop, put it down. It's quite a barrier, but I guess if you can strap on your skis and get on a slope, it's pretty easy to switch off.

Jo Cowper: 4:43

Hmm, this is well, to be honest, even the fact that, yes, okay, I could work at any time, anywhere, but the children go to school four days a week, only four, and the rest of the time because they're still quite young, they are here, they need my time, and so, effectively, one of my biggest things from last year actually was getting really strict about my time and putting in place those boundaries. Yeah, because I found that otherwise, as you say, everything just turned into a big mash of housework, work, work, children work. When do you actually do the living in that? Yeah, that was a big project for me last year actually.

Donna Eade: 5:17

Yeah, yeah, I can see it, and I think having young children can often help with that, because you do the mum guilt sometimes is a blessing, because it's like hang on a minute. No, I have got to put my children first in this situation, so I love that you have put that boundary in place and been able to stick to it. Talking about social media and that nomad way of life seeing, when it comes to marketing, we're kind of told that social media is the place that we need to be and we need to be there. Our brand needs to be there to sort of shine out and we need to post at least once a day, and you should be posting on your stories multiple times a day. And I connected with you first at a networking meeting where you turned found and said marketing is about doing less, not more, and so I'm hoping that you can tell us that there's a different way to do our marketing.

Jo Cowper: 6:14

Yes, the way that you've just described sounds like my idea of hell, I have to say. You know, if that was the only way to run a business, then I think I would, with regret, have to go and do something else. Yeah, it's not liveable. No, well, let me clarify it's not liveable for me and it's not liveable for a lot of the people who I work with. That's not to say there are not people for whom that's the best way to build your business, because if you enjoy doing that, it comes naturally to you and you take pleasure and can stay in flow.

Jo Cowper: 6:44

Spending all your life on social media Brilliant, absolutely.

Jo Cowper: 6:49

But the whole point of marketing strategy, as I see it, is to identify what you are not going to do, and that should be most things as far as I'm concerned, because you're running a business right. Your business, your job as a business owner isn't simply to market your business. If it were, then you'd be a marketer, you would not be a business owner. So the key is finding marketing activities that actually suit your strengths, suit your inclinations, and that you will stick to and not hate sticking to, because the point of running a business isn't to hate everything that you have to do and you will have to do marketing normally. So finding activities that you can do willingly and effectively and authentically right, because if you're not a person who wants to be on social media every day, then turning up there it's going to kind of you're almost putting on a big armor every time you want to turn up and do it, and that's not the life that you're here to build. Well, it certainly not the life I'm here to build.

Donna Eade: 7:53

I think for some people they're not aware that there is another way. So have you got some examples of other marketing methods that we can use if social media isn't a place that we want to be?

Jo Cowper: 8:08

That's a good question. I mean to be quite honest. Firstly, the one thing I'm going to say in defense of social media is that calling it by one single name and saying you know, this is social media, I like it or I love it, there's a lot of nuance in there and I think there's a big difference between saying I have the result to be present on all social media, which is generally a fast track to either achieving nothing at all with mediocre content, or burning yourself out and saying actually there is a space online where I found my people, where I don't mind being and that suits my energy, and I would certainly suggest that in most cases, it's worth finding the space where your clients are and where you are happy to be and making that part of your strategy. Now, to not completely sidestep your question, if social media really isn't for you and there will be people who just it's not their thing and nor is it appropriate for them to be on social media then of course, there's still plenty of offline marketing, for example.

Jo Cowper: 9:12

There's still blogging, there's still SEO. There's still there are many partnerships. There are many, many ways of building your business, depending on what your goals are, who your clients are and who you are yourself, but it has to be an intersection of those three things. I mean I would be lying if I said you could achieve any given goal with any given client without using social media. But as a business owner, we get to make a choice, right. We get to decide what matters most so we can decide. Well, actually, what matters most to me is that I will never set foot or set mind space in social media, but in that case you may need to adjust what it is that you want to achieve.

Donna Eade: 9:53

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and there are plenty of other ways to market your business. But it's what you were saying earlier. It's part of your. Social media is part of your strategy. It's not your entire strategy.

Jo Cowper: 10:09

No, it doesn't have to be Well, it doesn't have to be. Equally, if you want it to be, it's OK. You know, the important thing when you're building your marketing strategy is not to look out and say what all the things I could possibly do, what is everybody else doing because I need to do all those things? The important thing is to start, hold your nerve and start by looking in before you go looking out. And so you look in and you really tune in, first of all, to when am I going with this? You know, what do I actually want to achieve? What am I like to look like?

Jo Cowper: 10:41

You know, if it is, if some part of your plan is you want to be a talking head or a well-known influencer, then social media is probably going to have to be your friend, you know. Whereas, if you want to be working away invisibly in the background, achieving great things, but completely beneath the radar, then it might be that perhaps a networking strategy, perhaps a partnership strategy, perhaps a search strategy, would be better suited to what you want to achieve. It's important to think about what you want your life to look like. Think about who you therefore want to serve in terms of who your clients are going to be, and that will be partly defined by where you want to be in your life. Right, it's not just who could benefit from what you do, but who would it suit you to help? Yes, so, coming back to your social media thing, if you could help anybody, but it suits you best to help people who are not on social media, you know there's some, there are options.

Donna Eade: 11:39

Yes, because there are still people that aren't on social media. Although there are billions and billions of people on social media, there are still people, and those poor people get completely forgotten For sure.

Jo Cowper: 11:51

For sure. I mean the whole swage of the population who are either not on it or not on it regularly enough to be receptive to new things. I guess, yeah, that's my partner.

Donna Eade: 12:04

He's got social media platforms. He's had the same profile picture since before we were together. He has never, ever once changed his profile pitch to a picture of me and him. So I refuse to have one of me and him as my profile pitch. But yeah, he's, he's, he's just not on it.

Donna Eade: 12:19

He was there. He used it for the purpose of finding salsa congresses and salsa lessons and things like that to be part of that dance world. He just logged in to find that information and logged out again. He never really posted, never hasn't posted it. I can't remember the last time he ever opened the. The only time he opens the app actually is because I put him as the admin on my groups and stuff. So if I get locked out of my group or you know something happens, he might log in for that purpose, but he's just sitting there dormant.

Donna Eade: 12:52

So yeah, there is definitely people that are on social but aren't actually on social. And I love what you said about this whole looking out at what everybody else is doing and thinking that we've got to do it all because we're in a world now that's kind of telling us that more is more and you need to. You need to do this more and you need to do that more and you need to do the other more, and I'm somebody who really believes in quality over quantity. So I wanted to know what your thoughts are about how you know the business world is kind of putting out there that we've got to put out more content, put out more content, put out more content to sort of attract people into us, and what your thoughts are around that.

Jo Cowper: 13:35

I think less is more. First of all, I think less is more in terms of completely worthy quality is better than just noise. There's enough noise, okay, we don't need to be there creating anymore, both out of kindness to the people who may be on the receiving end of the noise and to ourselves, because it's when you're running a business you want what you're doing to feel purposeful, and if you are knowingly just churning out high volumes of things that don't feel authentic, don't feel good and perhaps don't get great results, so surely you're better spending your time on finding focus first. And so the way that I see it now, I don't think there's anybody out there and I could be wrong, but I don't think there's anybody out there who's going to say you really don't need to think about your ideal time, you don't need to think about your brand, you don't need to think about your competitive difference. There's surely nobody who's going to say this outright. But there are degrees, okay, and the way that I see it, you could imagine almost a scale that can tip. And so you pay lip service to that initial work of figuring out who you are, where you are, who you're for and where you're going, and then you just start blasting stuff out into the world, think you, well, tick, I did that bit, now I need to do marketing. What am I going to do? Oh God, I need to do everything. I need to do so much. I need to be really present. I'm not getting any results.

Jo Cowper: 14:52

Or the alternative you can spend real time and energy immersing yourself in figuring out who you are, who you're for, what you stand for, and then be just much more balanced, much more controlled and focused in how you are going to spend that time. And so I'm not going to say to you, if you get your brand right, you'll never need to do marketing again. It would be a lie. I mean, I've seen this lie, but it's about there, but it's simply not true, unless you are already I don't know, I'm trying to think of a celebrity, but basically, unless you are already mega, mega famous, that's not going to happen.

Jo Cowper: 15:31

But if you know exactly where you want to be and who you want to be taking with you, then you can be much more structured, much more focused and therefore calmer. And I kind of think of this as being this balance. I had a great conversation about this with somebody yesterday. Versus, you've got the, the hustle and grind approach, where you pay lip service to the planning and then you just go wild. Or you've got the ease and flow approach, where you get the, get the foundations really, really strong and then you work within your own flow on the things that suit you, reaching out only to people with whom you really feel aligned, which is going to lead to a happier and better and more fulfilling but, in my view, experience for all parties.

Donna Eade: 16:10

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And just you in saying that the ease and flow it just sounds so much calmer than that hustle and grind culture that we're kind of all getting sucked into. And social media is such a noisy place and I do think about that when I'm putting content out. It's like it's just this more noise to put into the ether and I think it can feel quite stressful for people who are sitting there and thinking you know, I don't want to just put something out for the sake of putting something out, I want it to mean something, but that might mean that they're not then putting it out as much as other people. But then they're feeling like they're not getting the same sort of traction and everybody's telling you if you want traction, you've got to be consistent, you've got to do it daily, you've got to do this, and it's really easy to kind of get swallowed up in what other people think you should be doing for your business.

Jo Cowper: 17:08

Yes, and I think there's a difference between consistent and daily as well. I think this daily business it's not necessarily for everybody. You know I have got, I've worked with people who are getting brilliant results from social media posting once a week. You know it suits them, it suits their clients, their stuff is quality. It goes out regularly once a week because now I'm not kidding myself that people are sitting there just waiting out. Tuesday that post is coming. But I think there's a degree of kindness in allowing your community to understand when they're going to hear from you. I don't mean you have to make an announcement, but the last place you want to be is sudden hustle and grind. I'm going to post twice a day for three weeks. I'm exhausted. I'll come back in the summer. You know you don't want to be in that state.

Jo Cowper: 17:57

Yeah you want to be doing something that feels sustainable and purposeful. I think this comes back to something that you said just there, that you can be saving away to put content out there, asking yourself what's it for? Is it just noise? This comes back to the planning. In the first place, I think. Well, if I am going to be on social media, then what's it for? What am I trying to achieve? For whom I think they're important, and ideally there's a two way. For whom in there, I mean that you're going to achieve something and somebody's gonna benefit.

Donna Eade: 18:27

Yeah, I love that. That's such a good little nugget there that really was, and I think, yeah, that consistency is so important and I, from a podcasting point of view, my podcast goes out every Thursday. People know it goes out every Thursday and I've spoken to my clients about the fact that you wanna be consistent with it. So if you're gonna put it out weekly, put it out weekly, choose your day and stick to that day, because you become part of people's routines and if the kids go to school on a Tuesday and then that person drops the kids off at school and then goes to the gym and they use that time between school and gym to listen to your podcast on a Tuesday and it's not there, you've disrupted their routine and, whether you want it to be that or not, there could be a genuine reason for it. But this is why I advocate for batching. You've kind of that's like a little cross and somebody said something.

Donna Eade: 19:25

I was talking to a guy that does podcast teaching the other day and he said people are looking for a reason to stop listening and I was like, oh, that's a way to look at it and by you not showing up on that Tuesday, you've almost put a little X against your sort of names, like three strikes and you're out.

Donna Eade: 19:46

It's like just even if there's a genuine reason, you may come back the next week and they listen and they go. Oh, okay, that's why. Yeah, fair enough, but it's still that little negative point to it and do that a number of times and people are going to stop listening because they can't rely on you to be part of that routine that they're used to having you for. So I think what you're saying there about not don't have to advertise it. I'm going to show up every Tuesday on Instagram, so if you want a new post from me, come and see it. But you just kind of do become part of people's routines and if you disappear, they do kind of go oh where have they gone? And it's kind of nice to be missed, I think.

Jo Cowper: 20:26

It's nice to be missed, but equally you don't want to be missing, you know.

Donna Eade: 20:29

No, that's it missing in action for sure. Okay, so we're kind of hopefully convinced people now that they don't have to be churning out all the time and that they can actually stop, step back from this refocus and look at what the purpose is for what they're sharing. So what are a couple of ways that we can start implementing that less is more approach in our marketing?

Jo Cowper: 20:59

Yeah, so one thing that I advocate with most people is that you don't try to have more than three focus areas at any given time. Right, and one thing I found super helpful to talk about with people lately is the idea that your marketing activities can be divided into two groups. But you've got the activities that transform the way that your brand is and the way that you're seen, and the way that perhaps they transform your development, your performance, your business, and the activities that maintain where you are in the mind of the people who see you, the people who need to see you, and I would suggest, at any given time, you don't really want to be focusing on more than three activities across these two categories. And so your transformative activities this would be working on your brand strategy, perhaps working on your visual brand. Perhaps you'd be in. It's a big investment. Perhaps you're doing a website. Perhaps you're investing in photography. It's this stuff that you do once or rarely and it's done. I would also put into this pot the kind of big strategic thinking where you're setting goals. What am I gonna do in my marketing strategy this year? And so you almost have your set of transform activities. Your maintain activities will be things like posting on social media, perhaps email newsletter, perhaps it's a partnership strategy.

Jo Cowper: 22:17

Whatever you're working on, perhaps it's events and PR, but in order to avoid trying to spread yourself too thin whilst you're also trying to run your business, always start with the goals and then think about what will really take you closer to the goal that you actually want to achieve most effectively with minimum input from you, because the idea isn't to work yourself to the bone.

Jo Cowper: 22:41

The idea is to do the thing that's most effective, or the things that are most effective that will put you in contact with the right people and will do that well that you could achieve. Where you could see the biggest difference most quickly, let's say so. If you, for instance, identify that you've got a new offer that you really need to launch, then yes, there's a bit of development work to do. Yes, you probably need to get it visible somewhere, and you might choose one main area to focus on maintaining your visibility whilst you're making the transformation. But then the balance is gonna shift, because the transformation is largely made, and then you're gonna look on the maintenance activity, how you're gonna really be talking about it and getting it out, and I would suggest that maybe every, certainly every three months, perhaps once a month you put aside some time to just regroup like what am I working towards? Am I still splitting my time into the right activities to get that, or do I need to recalibrate? Do I need to be set?

Donna Eade: 23:40

I love that. I love that. That's so good. One of my things for the podcast is productivity and planning, and so I love that. That's kind of been a theme throughout this episode is getting that initial plan, putting those goals in place, and every quarter on the podcast we do a goal review. I do a goal review with my listeners. I tell them what my goals were for the last quarter which they'll know if they listened to the previous quarterly goal reset and I tell them what I'm working towards, and it's always my sort of hope that they take that as a prompt to go back into their business and look, because this is not something that we set and forget. It's not okay.

Donna Eade: 24:17

We're going to make this plan and so, okay, I've decided that Instagram is going to be my place. I'm going to post twice a week. I'm going to put out something about X on this day and I'm going to do something about Y on this day, and that's going to kind of be my thing, and I'll be able to share some really good information with people and my listener. You know my audience is there and it's going to be a great, and then you don't ever look to change that ever again by coming back quarterly you get to review okay, is that actually working?

Donna Eade: 24:49

Is that, is it doing what I thought it was going to do? Am I getting the results? Is it worth my time? And I always kind of say that whenever you start to do something new, give it three months of working on it to see what kind of results you're getting from it, because we can all so easily give up when we're like I put a post out and nobody commented on it and so it's not working, I'm not going to do anymore. But these platforms do have algorithms. It does take time to get traction and, yeah, I kind of think three months is a good, good point to sort of review those things. So I like that. It's all kind of coming back to planning.

Jo Cowper: 25:28

No, I think that's right and I think that balance that you talked about is so important the fact that you've got to give a thing a fair chance, but it's so important to go in and cause corrects, because one of the things I see happen that contributes, I think, to a lot to marketing overwhelm is the point where it becomes an activity, like a thing that you have to do. The thing that always brings to mind is the way that I used to do ironing, when I still did ironing, which is a way back in the day yeah, me too. Yeah, but each item would pass across the ironing board from one side to the other. Would all the creases be gone? Probably not, you know. Would they come out perfect? No, but each thing had undergone the process and then moved to the other side. It was not an effective process, right, it was not necessarily a valuable use of my time because the things were they looking crisp and beautiful. No, will it take me a couple of hours?

Jo Cowper: 26:17

Probably yes, if you're going to give your time to it, it needs to be getting results and you need to be doing it purposefully, with some reward, and in the case of the ironing, that should be a pile of beautifully ironed laundry that you can then feel proud of. In the case of your marketing, it does need to be giving you something back, because otherwise it's literally taking up space in your life that you could be using on something that actually works. Yeah, and so I think time planning is basically, if you're wanting to build a marketing plan, if you want to think about what you should do in your marketing, don't jump into marketing without getting really really honest on your time first. Yeah, because we all over commit Right. If you sit and just write yourself this is my marketing plan of all the things I think I could do that could be good, that would be effective. It'll be as long as your arm.

Donna Eade: 27:03

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, so okay.

Jo Cowper: 27:05

No use to anybody now.

Donna Eade: 27:08

I have absolutely loved this conversation. So quickly, before we wrap up, tell people a little bit about how you work with your clients and what people could expect if they come to you for help with their branding and stuff.

Jo Cowper: 27:22

Of course, yes, thank you. So I support clients to build a marketing plan that they will actually enjoy to stick to. You may have guessed that it's going to be quite a limited, focused marketing action plan, and I do this over a six months program that I run called Launchpad, and the thing that's different about this is that the real deep focus is on the brand strategy that underpins the marketing. Now, the brand strategy. It sounds like big words, but what I'm really thinking about is we dial it. We work across three areas really.

Jo Cowper: 27:52

Firstly, your big vision. What are you actually trying to achieve? What's your success look like? And 10K months? That doesn't cut it. I want to know how, why? How would you be living? How would you be working? What will it feel like so you can really think is this the success I want? Design, the real success you want. Then we dial in your brand DNA, which is what I call the pieces that make you and your business unique, and that will include everything from who's your perfect customer right through to what makes you different from your competitors. What is your message? How do you present your offer? Is it even the right offer for those perfect customers in that vision? So we'll go really deep and look into the absolute foundations of your business before we'll put together a marketing plan.

Jo Cowper: 28:29

Now, all of this you work through in your own time, because I've taught lessons on each of these things where I will absolutely give you feedback at the end of each one, because I think one of the biggest problems that often comes up is you work through these processes on your own but you never get outside of your own head.

Jo Cowper: 28:44

So, a bit like me doing the ironing, you subject yourself to a process over a certain period of time, but you don't come out with anything new, and so I absolutely give kindly critical feedback in all of this in order to actually get a fresh perspective.

Jo Cowper: 29:00

And then the whole six month periods is really devoted to pushing that interaction with accountability and with support, and so the weekly Q&A sessions, we have fortnightly co-working sessions, there is an online community, and so the whole thing is designed to make you, to allow you let's not say we're going to make you to help you to think about exactly what would be the things that feel right to you, what's the marketing activity that feels meaningful and that you know, based on the insight that you've gathered, you know is going to work, but then to support you, to actually blim it. Well, do it, because having clarity is all very well and good, but if you don't act on the clarity then you might as well not have bothered. And I think, if I work with people over six months because I think it literally does take that long to build the habit that's then going to allow you to go on and continue to adhere to building the business that you want.

Donna Eade: 29:57

Brilliant, love that, love that, awesome. Well, I have a quick fire round that I do with my guests, which I would love to do with you now. And guys twinkles here. She's meowing her head off, if you can hear her, you know here she comes on camera now. But, yes, we're going to do this quick fire round. If that's OK with you, joe, go for it. I'm a little bit more about you. So what is the book that has had the most impact on your life thus far?

Jo Cowper: 30:26

Gosh, the book that's had the biggest impact on my life. My mind is going absolutely blank. I'm going to tell you, anne of Green Gables.

Donna Eade: 30:34

I literally mentioned this on one of my other podcasts because Michelle Kulinski came on at the beginning of the year and she said that Tintin was the and I was just like. I loved Anne of Green Gables. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher. I absolutely loved it. So yeah, tell me more about your love of Anne of Green Gables Gosh.

Jo Cowper: 30:53

I think it's just had such a profound, such a profound part in my childhood and indeed my adulthood, because they're also the films you know as well. It's just that magical sense of I don't know, a world where things turn out right like that, where you can. There are misadventures, but it always comes good. I the idea of going to Prince Edward Island, which just seemed like the promised land, just beautiful. It was the escapism actually. I mean, I'm English Literature graduate, I've got two degrees in English Literature, so I mean fiction, the reading or fiction, absorbing a fiction, has played a huge part in my life and that's a world that I could still, I suppose, conjure up at any minute, which I love. It just feels so real that you could touch it.

Donna Eade: 31:47

Yeah, I completely agree, and I did creative writing as my minor at university and I do. I love it. I'm smiling, for my joy is actually hurting from smiling. That was what you say in that, because I completely agree with you. And I actually watched a couple of YouTubers who live in Canada and they are, I think his parents live in Newfoundland. I don't know exactly where they live, but they had to take their dog to a vet on Prince Edward Island and I was like she wants to go to a vet on Prince Edward Island. It is a dream for me to go to Canada so I could go to Prince Edward Island. But yeah, I loved all the Anne of Green Gables, anne of Avonlea, I love that. And I've got two books on my bookshelf that are the big hardback books from when I was a kid. So, yeah, I love that. Brilliant, love it. Okay, so what's your go-to favorite snack when you're in a hurry?

Jo Cowper: 32:41

Oh, my word. Well, at this time of year, this is papillots, which is the type of chocolate we get here in France. It's seasonal. I've eaten one before this podcast the first thing I've eaten today. This is a bad admission. The second best thing about the papillots and this is my favorite quote as well. Each one comes with a quote. Oh, wow, and so well. Sometimes they come with random facts, but this one is good. It says so. I don't know how your French is.

Donna Eade: 33:15

No, no, my 7, 7, year. 7 French does not cover that beautiful French, but in life.

Jo Cowper: 33:23

you've got two choices every morning Either go back to sleep to carry on with your dream, or get up and make it your reality.

Donna Eade: 33:32

That is brilliant. Yeah, I love that.

Jo Cowper: 33:35

Actually, I just keep eating them.

Donna Eade: 33:38

Yeah, I just need more positive affirmations. That's why I'm eating them. Yeah, I love it Brilliant I love it but they're seasonal, so you do run out of them eventually. I do run out of them eventually, and then I'm very stuck.

Donna Eade: 33:53

Yeah, it's probably a good thing. I mean, it's not great for your waistline, I'm sure, not ideal. It's not absolutely ideal. Brilliant, I love it. Okay. So what is your ultimate me time thing to do? So, not something you go and do with your family, but something that just for you. What is your thing that you like to do?

Jo Cowper: 34:12

I go running because then my family can't even find me.

Donna Eade: 34:18

I feel absolutely out of there. Brilliant, I love it. I just run away.

Jo Cowper: 34:24

Yeah, I pretend I'm doing some kind of exercise, but actually just get out Brilliant, okay, lovely.

Donna Eade: 34:30

So where can people find you online?

Jo Cowper: 34:34

LinkedIn is your best place to find me online. I'm at Joe Kelper Communications, I think is my URL.

Donna Eade: 34:43

Okay, lovely, I shall make sure that's linked in the show notes. Guys, please go over and connect with Joe. Joe, have you got something freebie or something that we're going to put in the show notes for the guys?

Jo Cowper: 34:54

Absolutely yes. I have got a marketing action planning webinar which comes with four, three workbooks and resources. Well, let's say resources two workbooks and two planner sheets. It's about 35 minutes to watch and it basically talks you through a process for building your marketing action plan for one quarter of the year.

Donna Eade: 35:16

Fabulous. Okay, I shall make sure that that is linked. Guys Head over there and grab that. That sounds like a great thing to bring to one of my quarterly review podcasts. So make sure that you're here for that in April by making sure you're subscribed where you listen. Thank you so much for your time today, joe. It's been fantastic.

Jo Cowper: 35:34

Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure to be here in Tokti and join this show with Shedlove for Anne of Green Gators.

Donna Eade: 35:40

Absolutely, absolutely Right, guys. We will see you in the next one. Bye for now.